1. Field
The present invention relates to apparatuses, systems and methods for disseminating information pertaining to vehicular safety, in order to alert traffic authorities and road users about situations that compromise driver and passenger safety, or generate a road hazard such as stolen/hijacked vehicles, dangerous driving, burning vehicles or collisions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Each year some 50 million people are injured in traffic accidents worldwide, with 1.3 million dying as a result: this figure is greater than the yearly number of persons dying from malaria. Traffic accidents also have significant economic consequences, accounting for global yearly losses in the range of US$500 billion. Among traffic accident statistics, hit-and-run incidents are noteworthy since a large proportion of them remain unsolved: in 2004 there were 23,714 hit-and-run incidents in the UK with 145 fatalities, and without information from witnesses, the public or street cameras there is very little that can be done to find the culprits. Other traffic-related offences such as stolen vehicles also have an impact in terms of monetary losses: in 2011 alone 65,000 vehicles—worth an estimated £300 million—were stolen and never recovered.
Current devices and systems aimed at improving road safety such as CCTV, speed limiters, vehicle detection, radar/lidar or vehicle tracking devices suffer from limitations such as lack of system-wide real-time alerts, possible vehicle misidentification, or excessive cost due to reliance on human operators or technologies such as GPS or mobile phone networks. Additionally, some of these systems require human operation and interpretation, introducing additional costs as well as possible human error. Besides, in circumstances such as in hit-and-run incidents there are often no systems or human operators in place to record the occurrence of such an event.
In view of these problems it would be highly desirable to have the means to: a) provide automated, real-time warnings to drivers and road safety agencies about events that endanger road users, with the possibility of uniquely identifying involved vehicles; b) generate urgent alerts in situations that represent an immediate threat to the physical integrity of driver and passengers; c) provide evidence that can be correlated with incident reports generated by witnesses and traffic authorities; and d) help to locate and safely disable stolen vehicles.